2
I’d taken her for granted, this soft, tender, undemanding self—all these years. I’d criticized her, and ignored her, and scorned her, and denied her. And she’d just endured it. She’d stayed with me and taken it all—because she had no choice.
And now it was a love story—but a tragic one. Because now it was too late.
Tears streamed from the corners of my eyes as I watched the sky. I regretted how mean I’d been. I regretted how relentlessly I had refused to show myself any kindness. I felt the most doomed and hopeless protectiveness. I wished beyond anything that I could save her.
But there was nothing I could do.
Nothing except apologize.
The people who hurt us in life almost never apologize. But she deserved it. And if nothing else, before she disappeared, I wanted her to know that.
I should have loved all of my everything. Because it was mine.
As the roof surface tilted another few degrees, I stroked the tummy that I’d always wished had been flatter, and I said, out loud: “You’re soft, and welcoming, and lovely. I couldn’t see it before. I’m sorry.”
I kept going, moving down to my thighs, patting them the way you would a child who needed comfort. “You are velvety and tender,” I said, again, out loud, “and I never should have forbidden you to touch each other.”
I worked my way around back to my haunch. “You spent a full morning with Hutch,” I said, “and I didn’t even let you enjoy it.”
And on, and on. I apologized to my boobs for all the contraptions I had smushed them into. To my calves for insisting all those years that they were the wrong shape. To my butt for my lifelong, daily assessments that it was too round , of all things—when it had been just the perfect amount of round all along. To my pie piece—and just my irises in general—for looking at them so many times without ever really seeing them.
I worked my way around every inch, from arches to collarbones, apologizing, sincerely.
“This is the last chance I have to say it,” I said, “and I know it’s not enough. But I bullied you. I picked on you like the meanest mean girl in the world. I made you hate yourself. I sucked the joy out of everything—walking down the street, or eating a BLT, or just sitting in the sun. I should have taken you swimming and let you float in the water. I should have let you relax. I should have stood up for you. I should have admired you, and enjoyed you, and kept you company, and celebrated you. I know it’s too late,” I said. “But I’m so impossibly sorry.”
I WAS ALL cried out by the time I finally heard it.
Far and distant and faint, but unmistakable. The sound of air being chopped.
And I suddenly remembered what hope felt like.
My head lifted at the sound, and then I was craning upward, searching the sky. The helicopter looked black at first—backlit by the sun—and I felt this sting of worry that maybe it wasn’t the Coast Guard, after all. Maybe it was just some random helicopter flying by. Some irritating billionaire out for a pleasure ride to enjoy the catastrophe.
But then it got closer, and the light shifted: orange.
Orange!
Chromophobia cured .
My new favorite color from now until forever. I’d be buying nothing but orange throw pillows for the rest of my life.
“It’s them,” I told George Bailey, sitting up a bit. “It’s definitely them. It’s one hundred percent, absolutely, holy-shit-we’re-rescued them!”
Then, just as I said it, as if to confirm… the one waterlogged pontoon with the gash that had been slowly filling with water gave up its struggle to stay afloat. One whole side of the Rue the Day went under, and the boat shifted until it was fully on its side.
George Bailey and I slid off the deck and landed in the water.
The flare gun slid off, too—never to be seen again.
I felt a flash of panic before remembering that these guys didn’t need a flare. They knew what to look for. And even if most of the boat was submerged, from up there, they could see down into the water. Hutch had told me that. In the clear waters of the keys, they could sometimes see the ocean floor.
They’d find us. They would.
After the houseboat finished shifting, the only thing holding us up was the second—and last—pontoon. Which wasn’t really built to do the whole job by itself. It was only a matter of time before the weight of the water pulled the whole boat under, but, for now, one side of it remained sticking straight up out of the water like an iceberg. I found a piece of railing to hold on to, and then I braced one leg against the submerged hull to pin George Bailey next to me.
He sat politely on my thigh, like it was a bench, but the fall had popped his cut open, and now he was bleeding again.
When the helicopter got closer, I started waving and yelling, more like a reflex than for any good reason. Then, as they moved into place to hover above us, I had a bunch of crazy thoughts all at once: What if the rescue swimmer turned out to be Hutch? I mean, it wouldn’t be him. It couldn’t be—of course.
But what if it was?
Even if he still hated me for, ya know, my collusion in a tragic web of lies , he’d still have to rescue me, right? The Coast Guard couldn’t just selectively rescue only the people they liked. And this was Hutch, after all. No matter how angry he was, he wouldn’t just let me drown in the ocean. He wasn’t a fair-weather hero.
Plus, I had his dog. We were kind of a package deal at this point.
I realized, even at the time, how bonkers my inner monologue sounded.
Was it dehydration?
It wouldn’t be Hutch. Every swimmer from Texas to Maine had probably deployed to help out with this. I was too tired for math at this point, but I think we can all agree that my odds of being rescued by the man who just happened to have given me the best worst kiss of my life yesterday—was it only yesterday?—were the definition of low.
Impossible, even.
The point was—who cared! It was somebody. Anybody. A person with a helicopter and the skills to get me and my favorite dog and his pet toad up into it.
I didn’t need the love of my life, I reminded myself.
Let’s not be greedy.
Any rescue swimmer would do.
That’s when the helicopter moved closer, and positioned itself lower, and the wind from the blades started kicking up the water in a spray all around the surface. I had to squint against the spray, but I saw some legs—and some fins—hanging from the open side before a swimmer deployed in a free fall into the waiting ocean below.
He wasn’t far away, but it doesn’t take much to lose sight of someone at water level in the ocean. A swell would lift George Bailey and me up a few inches, and we’d see the swimmer freestyling toward us at a sprint, then the swell would drop, and we’d lose sight of him again.
Note that the swimmer was wearing the standard-issue helmet, and I was only catching glimpses of him between swells. But I swear to god, the minute I saw him drop from the sky, I felt a jolt of ecstasy that firmly thumbed its nose at reality.
That’s Hutch , I thought.
It couldn’t be. It was impossible.
But based on how much thumping George Bailey’s tail was doing against the hull of the boat, he must’ve thought so, too.
We both had to be hallucinating, I told myself. I, for one, was dehydrated and traumatized and had just come to grips with my own mortality. Anybody could hallucinate her own personal favorite US Coast Guard employee under conditions like that.
As the swimmer got closer and closer, I kept expecting his real face to come into focus, and I was determined not to be disappointed when it did. But the thing was, he just kept on looking like Hutch.
Finally, he reached us—and my anticipation had been so intense for so many minutes that before he could even say his normal spiel about being a Coast Guard swimmer here to rescue me, I jumped the gun and shouted: “I’m sorry, but I’m having a hallucination”—here I smacked the side of my head a couple of times, as if to shake it out—“that you are a different rescue swimmer who I have a tortured crush on. So if I keep calling you Hutch, don’t worry. That’s all me. That’s the dehydration talking. You’re just a mirage in my mental desert. I can’t seem to clear my head.”
“You’re not hallucinating,” the rescue swimmer said.
“I’m telling you I am.”
“You’re not.”
“Do we have time to argue about this right now?”
“Katie,” the swimmer said. “You’re not hallucinating. This is Hutch.”
Then, as if to confirm, George Bailey whimpered and double-timed the drumbeat of his wagging tail against the hull. And that was the real confirmation: George Bailey’s excitement. This was not a hallucination. This had to be the impossible man himself.
And so, it happened.
Of all the shipwrecks in all the waters off all the keys, Hutch swam up to mine.
HUTCH WAS ALL business.
I hadn’t exactly been expecting witty banter. But here’s all the hello I got: “Which one of you is chumming the water?”
I looked around and saw the water was pinkish. “It’s George Bailey,” I said. “He cut his paw on a broken lamp.”
George Bailey was staring intently at Hutch, but not barking. Instead, he just kept thumping his tail.
“Can’t let him do that,” Hutch said, pulling George Bailey away from the boat and positioning him for me to hold on to farther away.
“Do what?”
“Thump his tail against the hull like that.”
I gave Hutch a look, like How could that possibly matter?
So he went on: “Repetitive underwater knocking sounds might summon predators.”
Oh, shit. I looked around.
Hutch gave a nod, put his arm up to signal for a basket, and then said, “I’ll take George Bailey first.”
Wait—what? He was taking the dog first?
If I’d been calmer, I’m sure I could’ve come up with many reasons why it made all the sense in the world to make me wait. George Bailey was injured, and bleeding, and possibly summoning predators. Also, he was a dog. You couldn’t exactly give him instructions. You couldn’t toss him a raft and expect him to climb into it. I—technically—was a functioning human adult.
In theory, I could hold it together a little longer.
But that’s when Hutch’s frowny eyes met mine. “We’ve hit bingo,” he said.
“We’ve hit bingo?” I asked, hoping I was remembering what that meant wrong. “ Hit bingo hit bingo? Like run out of fuel hit bingo?”
“That’s right,” Hutch said, keeping his eyes on the lowering basket. “We should already be gone. They’re gonna want to drop a raft for you and go back.”
“Go back?” I choked. “They want to leave me here? Alone?”
“Alone with a raft .”
What kind of half-assed rescue was this? “They can’t do that!”
“When you’re out of fuel, you’re out of fuel.”
“But I—” I protested. “I can barely swim!”
He was watching the basket meet the water now. “I made that argument.”
“Please don’t leave me here!” I called after him, as he gripped George Bailey’s collar and maneuvered him toward the basket.
“I’ll try like hell to come back,” Hutch said. “But it’s the pilots’ call.”
He positioned himself in the basket with George Bailey.
“You’ll be fine,” Hutch called to me, as the basket started to rise. “Just stay with the boat! And hum something!”
“Hum something?!” What terrible advice. “Hum what?!”
“Anything. Just pick a song and hum it!”
This might sound odd, but, in that moment, as I watched Hutch and George Bailey, my only two friends in this entire ocean, lift up and away toward the rescue helicopter…
I really kind of felt personally rejected.
I get that the circumstances were extreme. I get that Hutch was on duty doing his professional job in the wake of a natural disaster. I get he’d been on duty many hours, and his dog was bleeding, and his helicopter was out of fuel.
But he just really didn’t seem all that excited to see me. You know?
It left me feeling worse than I had before the rescue. And as I watched the hoist from below, I wondered how I would hold it together if they really made the decision to fly away.
Could I even blame them?
Was it reasonable in any way to ask an entire Coast Guard flight crew to endanger their lives for a woman who should never have even come to Florida in the first place?
Seriously. What was I even doing here—clinging to a half-sunk boat in the ocean?
Hum something , Hutch had said.
Fine. But the only song I could think of was the one Hutch always hummed. “Heart and Soul.” Good thing he hadn’t ordered me to sing—because I didn’t know the words.
Remember when I said it was only a matter of time before the water-filled boat sank, dragging its one last working pontoon with it?
Next, the Rue the Day hissed like the Titanic —and then groaned loud enough to startle me into letting go.
This baby was sinking for real.
On instinct, I started swimming away.
And then, from a few feet away, I turned back to watch in horror as the Rue the Day sighed… and then sank away under the waves.
Like, sank sank.
Like, disappeared under the surface sank.
And then I really was alone.
I thought about Lucky—our valiant little nonpoisonous friend, gone down with the ship. I watched bubbles churn the surface for a few minutes, hoping he might pop up, sputtering, and I could swim over to rescue him.
But there was no toad in sight.
Poor little guy. He’d survived all that just to drown in the end.
I said a little prayer for him before what happened next: the undamaged pontoon broke away from the boat’s body down below—and shot into the air nearby, like a whale breaching, before slapping back down onto the ocean’s surface in the distance.
Then all I could do was wait, treading water in my life jacket.
There are no words for the stark loneliness of being left alone in a vast ocean that way. I might as well have been on Mars. It was bad before, but at least, then, I’d had a boat—and a dog—to hold on to. Now there was no one and nothing.
Nothing but the memory of Hutch’s “chumming the water” comment.
Also his comment about thumping sounds summoning predators .
Was that really my next worry? Being eaten by sharks? Hutch had said that sharks didn’t see us as prey—but that was before there was literal blood in the water. Then I remembered hypothermia, and how you could get it even in warm climates. How long would that take, exactly? I spent some time considering which was worse: eaten by sharks or paradoxical undressing. You’d die either way, of course. But was the agony of being torn limb from limb better than the humiliation of being discovered naked?
Tough call.
I’d always thought there was some upper limit to how many bad things the universe was legally allowed to send your way… but maybe not.
I looked up at the helicopter. They hadn’t flown away yet—but they hadn’t come back, either.
Was George Bailey okay? Was Hutch okay?
The Coast Guard wouldn’t really leave me here, would they?
Then, like an answer, the helicopter started moving back in—lower and closer.
The ocean spray whipped up again.
I saw the legs dangling again, knowing now for sure they were Hutch’s, unless I had truly lost all grasp on reality, and the flippers—dammit, the fins —and the free fall.
I started swimming toward Hutch as he sprinted toward me.
When he reached me, he signaled up for a sling.
“No basket?” I asked.
“No time,” Hutch said. “We’ve gotta RTB.”
I knew that term: return to base.
The sling lowered but the wind blew it around, and it took Hutch a minute to catch it. “Come on,” he said, positioning me inside it and pulling it taut. He had a harness on, too, and he clipped it to the wire so we were face-to-face—and then he gave the thumbs-up for ready to the flight mechanic.
With that, we jerked up out of the water—the helicopter above already shifting into forward motion—and we dangled behind it, trailing through the air.
This was not, shall we say, the gentle and loving hoist that George Bailey had received. And I’ll tell you something else—those harnesses cinch tight under your arms.
“What the hell?” I asked Hutch.
“Told you,” he said, with that half-smile of his. “We’ve gotta go.”
And so the helicopter rose into the sky like that as the hoist cable towed us through the air, behind and below the helicopter, the two of us chest to chest as the wind thrashed all around us.
The closest thing I can compare it to is those chair rides at carnivals, where you spin around loose in the air with only one flimsy lap chain to hold you in.
In another setting, it might’ve been exhilarating.
But I’d had enough exhilaration for one day.
I didn’t look around, or take in the sight of it, or make a memory to marvel at later.
Instead, I leaned forward to press my head against Hutch’s chest.
He found my chin to tilt my face up.
“You’re okay,” he said, over the wind, as I met his eyes. “It’s all okay now.”
And here’s the funny thing: despite everything, I believed him.
“I’m so sorry about the Rue the Day ,” I said.
Hutch looked down at the water.
I went on. “I’m so sorry about everything . I never meant to lie to you. But I have to tell you something. I didn’t know Cole had lied to you until he showed up here on the night of the conga line. And then I couldn’t tell you the truth because I had to protect Rue. I know that doesn’t make any sense, and I can’t explain why, but—”
“I know,” Hutch said.
“You know?”
“Cole called the air station in Miami. And so did Rue. And they both explained everything. Twice.”
Okay, this was better. “So, yes, I did lie to you—but I swear I never meant to.”
“You didn’t lie to me,” Hutch said.
“I didn’t?”
“You got caught in Cole’s lie. That’s different.”
“But I didn’t correct it.”
“You were looking out for Rue.”
“Does that mean you’re not angry at me?”
Now Hutch broke out his iconic frown. “Is that a real question?”
“Of course!”
But now he was unzipping a pocket on his sleeve. And then reaching in with his fingers. And then pulling out… my hibiscus hair clip.
I looked at it. Then I looked at him. “That’s my flower,” I said.
“It’s my flower now,” Hutch said.
“You took it?”
“I stole it.”
“That day? At the pool?”
Hutch nodded.
“But… why?”
“Because,” Hutch said, looking right into my eyes, “I wanted it.”
Whatever he was saying felt like more than he was saying.
“You wanted it—the first day we swam together?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But Cole said—”
“Cole says a lot of things.”
“Cole said you were a love hater.”
Hutch squinted and thought about it. “I guess that’s actually true.”
Maybe it was the wind, or the ocean below, or the flying through the air . But I felt like I couldn’t keep up. “It is?”
Hutch nodded. “Love is the worst.” But he was smiling at me. “It makes you jealous. And possessive. And desperate. It upsets your orderly life. It haunts you, and worries you, and gets you drunk with your brother. It tempts you. It makes you say yes when you should say no, and it stops you from saying yes when that’s the only thing you want to do. It keeps you up all night with worry, and then makes you run out of fuel because you can’t stop searching for a woman on a sinking houseboat.”
Now I was smiling. “A woman and a dog,” I corrected.
“A woman and a dog,” Hutch agreed.
“So you really do hate love,” I said, smiling bigger.
Hutch nodded. “A lot. So much.”
I looked into his dark eyes. “I hate it, too.”
“Good choice,” Hutch said. “Let’s hate it together.”
“Thank you for saving me,” I said then.
He kept his eyes on mine. “Thank you for saving my dog.”
“Guess what else I saved?”
“My cell phone?”
I wrinkled my nose. “No—sorry. That went down with the ship.”
Upside: so did all the crazy texts I’d sent him.
“But I did save,” I went on, patting my jeans pocket, “your mom’s pennies.”
Hutch checked the sight of my bulging pocket, and then turned to look down at the spot where the houseboat had gone down, then back at my pocket again. “All of them?”
I shrugged. “I figured, if I really started drowning, I could empty my pockets. But I’d hold on to them for you until then.”
“Why would you do that?”
“I wanted to apologize.”
“To apologize?”
“And to thank you for kissing me on the tarmac—even if you didn’t want to.”
“You think I didn’t want to?”
“I thought you might hate me—for real.”
Now Hutch shook his head. “Did you think that kiss yesterday was a hate kiss?”
“I’m not sure?” I said. “I’m not even a hundred percent sure right now that you aren’t a hallucination.”
“It wasn’t a hate kiss,” Hutch said.
“No?” I asked.
“No,” Hutch said. “Want to know what kind of kiss it was?”
“What kind?”
“This kind,” he said. And then, right there, the two of us harnessed all alone together on a cable in the middle of the sky, during a peaceful miracle of an interlude between everything that had just happened and everything that was yet to come, in front of an entire flight crew of Coasties who would certainly tease him about it for the rest of his life —he pulled me close and kissed me.
In a way that left no doubt about what he wanted.
Or who we had become to each other.
Or how he really felt about love.
And then Hutch pulled away to say, “It wasn’t a hate kiss. It was a love kiss. In case you couldn’t tell.”
And then he dove back in for another one.